History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v2.c24.s9: Jaina Temple, Delhi.
History of Indian and Eastern Architecture v2.c24.s9
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Jaina Temple, Delhi.
v2.c24.s9.1
There is one other example that certainly deserves notice before leaving this branch of the subject, not only on account of its beauty, but its singularity. In the preceding pages it has frequently been necessary to remark upon that curious wooden strut by which the Jains sought to relieve the apparent weakness of the longer beams under their domes. It occurs at Âbû (Woodcut No. 284), at Girnâr, at Udayapur, and many other places we shall have to remark upon in the sequel; everywhere, in fact, where an octagonal dome was used. It was also employed by the Hindûs in their torans, and so favourite an ornament did it become that Akbar used it frequently both at Agra and Fathpur Sîkrî. For centuries it continued without much alteration, but in stone, as for example in the great Baoli at Bundi,² we find it a mere ornament, and it is generally used as such. It was left, however, for a Jaina architect of the end of the 18th or beginning of last century, in the Muhammadan city of Delhi, to suggest a mode by which what was only conventionally beautiful might really become an appropriate, and really, constructive part of lithic architecture.
v2.c24.s9.2
² 'Picturesque Illustrations of Indian Architecture,' plate 17.
v2.c24.s9.3
As will be observed in the next cut (No. 300), the architect has had the happy idea of filling in the whole of the back of the strut with pierced foliaged tracery of the most exquisite device—thus turning what, though elegant, was one of the feeblest parts of Jaina design into a thoroughly constructive stone bracket; one of the most pleasing to be found in Indian architecture, and doing this while preserving all its traditional associations. The pillars, too, that support these brackets are of great elegance and constructive propriety, and the whole makes up as elegant a piece of architectural design as any certainly of its age. The weak part of the composition is the dome. It is elegant, but too conventional. It no longer has any constructive propriety, but has become a mere ornament. It is not difficult, however, to see why natives should admire and adopt it. When the eyes of a nation have been educated by a gradual succession of changes in any architectural object, persevered in through five or six centuries, the taste becomes so accustomed to believe the last fashion to be the best, the change has been so gradual, that people forget how far they are straying from the true path. The European, who has not been so educated, sees only the result, without having followed the steps by which it has been so reached, and is shocked to find how far it has deviated from the form of a true dome of construction, and, finding it also unfamiliar, condemns it. So, indeed, it is with nine-tenths of the ornaments of Hindû architecture. Few among us are aware how much education has had to do with their admiration of classical or mediæval art, and few, consequently, perceive how much their condemnation of Indian forms arises from this very want of gradual and appropriate education.
v2.c24.s9.4
300. Upper part of Porch of a Jaina Temple at Delhi. (From a Photograph.)